Tesla’s competitors find that going electric has its own set of problems

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/teslas-competitors-find-that-going-electric-has-its-own-set-of-problems-2019-11-04?link=sfmw_fb&fbclid=IwAR3TtwCcizclfVN-fQfY5QIaaDOzXYk8mV9AkyVinRl-t0g7Ff844q16tBk

by prostoalex • 7 years ago

36 77 7 years ago

marketwatch.com

pascalmahe• 7 years ago

My French bias is going to show but I wonder how Renault's Zoe is doing. It's been out for 6 years. Granted, Renault is completely absent from the US market and the car is uh... really not marketable for the US (it's tiny).

clouddrover11• 7 years ago

It's sold 35k units so far in 2019 up to September:

http://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2019/10/global-top-20-september...

And there's a new revision of the Zoe coming out soon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64iJj3HTnMQ

baq• 7 years ago

i've been driven in one and it was very surprising how nice it was; the price was completely prohibitive though.

thefounder• 7 years ago

I don't believe Renault makes Zoe to sell. They make the model for compliance with EU regulations.

moccachino2• 7 years ago

I'm curious, how do the regulations incentivize making a model that they don't really need to sell much of?

isoprophlex• 7 years ago

Really? Aren't sales numbers way too high for this strategy? Like, multiple tens of thousands sold?

Compare this to the ridiculous fiat 500e at barely 2k sold...

harperlee• 7 years ago

Madrid has zoes for carsharing through the zity app and frankly they are perfect for the city and nearby roads.

xedeon10• 7 years ago

Not too good I'm afraid. Renault is already FCF negative.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/10/18/renault-facing-trouble...

Their long time partner Nissan is facing troubles too:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-25/nissan-s-...

random_kris• 7 years ago

I've test drived Renault Zoe. It was my first electric car driving expirience and I was amazed... Too bad it doesn't offer enough for its price.

clouddrover11• 7 years ago

Back to Tesla: According to an equity research paper by Jefferies, it is the only company that doesn’t share the misfortune of its competitors.

Maybe. They're being investigated for battery fires:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a29666731/nhtsa-investigat...

Telsa has reduced the battery capacity of some Model S's and X's. There's a class action in progress to at least clarity the reduction in capacity and get some kind of remedy from Tesla. If Tesla has done it for safety reasons and not reported that to the NHTSA then Tesla could be in for some fines:

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/sudden-loss-of-range...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-battery/tesla-owner...

rcMgD2BwE72F4• 7 years ago

They're being investigated for battery fires

No, they aren't: https://twitter.com/VGrinshpun/status/1191187275394228226

clouddrover11• 7 years ago

Read the articles.

mack1001• 7 years ago

I have been following Tesla closely for the last 5 years. The amount of FUD has been astounding considering no other car manufacturer has managed to launch a mass market electric car. Analysis after analysis say that competition is right around the corner or NIO is going to beat Tesla. Question is If these misleading articles/statements are ethical?

rapsey• 7 years ago

FUD against a company is directly correlated to the amount of short positions against them.

Question is If these misleading articles/statements are ethical?

The worlds media are quite unburdened by ethics.

threeseed6• 7 years ago

Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt, Hyundai Ioniq, Hyundai Kona, BMW i3, VW e-Golf, Audi e-Tron, Mercedes EQC, Renault Zoe, Jaguar i-Pace etc.

Are they not mass market cars ?

Hyundai Kona is outselling every Tesla model combined in some EU countries so I would consider them mass market.

PuffinBlue• 7 years ago

And the Kona would be selling more if they could make it faster.

How do I know this? Because I would have bought one (so technically they've have sold at least one more!) but it's a 12 month lead time right now. They even briefly removed the option a few months ago to order from their website - it may be back now but I think it doesn't mention the delay in getting the car.

The turning point really is here for a lot of us with driveways.

EDIT - nope it's still un-orderable. Just the link to join the waiting list.

xedeon10• 7 years ago

Hyundai Kona is outselling every Tesla model combined in some EU countries so I would consider them mass market.

Citation needed.

Model 3 alone is outselling all other EVs in EU even with the logistical constraint of having to ship them by sea.

https://www.carthrottle.com/post/the-tesla-model-3-has-insta...

jryle70• 7 years ago

Where does your number come from? You should also be more specific about those "some EU countries".

Kona sales in Europe in 2019 so far is 77,641 [0], but the electric version is likely tiny because Hyundai only sold 2,424 fully electric cars in June 2019. Across all models! Less than one percent of their total number [1]

Tesla has sold 75,959 in Europe in 2019 [2]

[0] http://carsalesbase.com/european-car-sales-data/hyundai/hyun... [1] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/08/22/hyundai-kia-great-elect... [2] http://carsalesbase.com/european-car-sales-data/tesla/

cjhopman4• 7 years ago

I don't understand how hn can praise tesla for selling cars on one hand and then condemn uber for being unprofitable on the other... neither of them have any evidence of doing anything other than funneling investor money into the hands of their customers.

xedeon10• 7 years ago

Am I missing something here?

Tesla made a profit of $143 million in Q3 2019 alone. Yet Uber still haven't.

https://ir.tesla.com/static-files/47313d21-3cac-4f69-9497-d1...

threeseed6• 7 years ago

I find these type of articles hilarious because they treat EV cars as though they are a gaming PC where all that matters is specs. Completely oblivious to the fact that people don't buy cars based just on specs.

Intangibles like brand, design, experience, feeling, handling etc are often just as if not more important. For example no Porsche Taycan buyer is ever going to choose a Model 3/S just because it has a few extra kilometres of range.

imglorp• 7 years ago

Also the organizations involved. Of course in this case you might be trading one shitty dealer dinosaur experience for a new, shiny, curated, walled garden.

threeseed6• 7 years ago

Actually you can spec and order a Porsche online just like a Tesla.

zhdc18• 7 years ago

It depends on how much the range difference is at the end of the day, and if you trust Tesla or Porsche more to deliver on future battery tech (not talking about a Tacyan vs. Model S comparison, but a company vs. company comparison).

Tesla has a large advantage in this that is at least partially in house (judging from their willingness to expand production from Panasonic to LG and now CATL).

threeseed6• 7 years ago

1. Porsche Taycan charges significantly faster than any Tesla so batteries/range isn't as useful an advantage.

2. You completely missed the point. Porsche drivers aren't looking for an economical car just as Hyundai drivers probably won't find much use for a dash stopwatch.

phkahler• 7 years ago

> Intangibles like brand, design, experience, feeling, handling etc are often just as if not more important.

I think that's why the incumbents are having a hard time. They want to make an electric version of what they already have. It's probably easier to produce an EV that was designed to be electric from the start. If that's the case, the problem may be one of commitment. Tesla is committed - they only make electric cars.

threeseed6• 7 years ago

Most of the newer EVs have been built from scratch.

And are in fact now being shared amongst the various groups as standardised architectures e.g. Porsche/Audi, Polestar/Volvo, Rivian/Ford.

rkangel• 7 years ago

It is notable that Porsche didn't try to create an electric 911 or Cayman. Despite there being a multitude of different version of 911s (Normal, Turbo, GT3 etc.) they (presumably) realised that an electric car was going to be fundamentally different. Different internal layout, different handling, so they started again.

cjhopman4• 7 years ago

Incumbents are only having a hard time because they want to be profitable. If they were willing to lose $20 billion they could've sold a lot more EVs by now.

arethuza• 7 years ago

Well, I do pay a lot of attention to price and range - unless you can get a decent sized car (at least by UK standards) for less than £25K and with a range of at least 300 miles I'm not going to buy one!

freerobby• 7 years ago

For example no Porsche Taycan buyer is ever going to choose a Model 3/S just because it has a few extra kilometres of range.

Would you be willing to expand on this? The reason I ask is that there are plenty of ex-Porsche (and ex-BMW) owners over at TMC and /r/teslamotors. Are they the minority, or are the brand loyalists the minority?

blaser-waffle• 7 years ago

Not OP but my guess is that Tesla has a "cool, new, hip" factor that has more to offer than Porsche, which is your dad's high end luxury vehicle.

prostoalex• 7 years ago

Two variables that seem to drive the entire market are $/mile of range and grand total range.

The short history of EV market has plenty of vehicles that tried to up sell the je ne sais quoi factor, and were met with buyer indifference.

zhdc18• 7 years ago

Manufacturers are playing from behind & are worried about it. I'm aware of at least one (I won't mention who it is, but it's not particularly hard to guess) who is funding a number of studies on how to capture market share in this segment as a late entrant.

You're also starting to see a lot of concern about the economic/social impact that electrification is going to have - it's mentioned in the linked article, but electric vehicles require a lot less labor to manufacture. Assuming that the traditional players in this industry even survive the switch to electric vehicles, you're going to see a lot of layoffs as all of this plays out.

cjhopman4• 7 years ago

electric vehicles require a lot less labor to manufacture

That's awesome!

But I'm confused...

why do Tesla's cars take so much more man hours to manufacture than other cars then? If electric cars take less labor and everybody knows that Tesla is lightyears ahead of all those dinosaur traditional manufacturers, wtf are Tesla's employees spending their time on?

zhdc18• 7 years ago

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/electric-vehicles-pos...

Think component suppliers. Electric cars require a lot less parts, which is going to hurt component suppliers & the people who work for them a lot.

rco8786• 7 years ago

Semi guess here. But OP maybe meant that electric motors require less labor to manufacture more specifically. Tesla’s come up to speed on actual mass manufacturing of the vehicles themselves has resulted in a lot of manual work that other big manufacturers would have been able to automate. This was a big “scandal” with the Model 3...where it was reported that some things were being done by hand that normally wouldn’t be

Bombthecat• 7 years ago

I think there was an article about that.

They wanted to move fast. Very fast. Human labor is quicker "ready to work". Robots needed to be designed, ordered, produced, shipped, tested, reprogrammed etc before they are ready.

And at the end of the day, if it is easy, repeatible work. Humans are not that expensive. (for the flexibility they offer)

bgarbiak• 7 years ago

What's awesome about less labor being needed to manufacture a car? Asking genuinely in good faith.

sunstone2• 7 years ago

It's not clear to me why you're getting the down votes here zhdc1, what you say is common knowledge at this point.

raxxorrax2• 7 years ago

A few years ago our city had introduced electric buses. These were quite awesome and significantly reduced noise pollution. Most noise actually comes from tires instead of motors nowadays with the exception of slow speed acceleration, where buses can be extremely loud. Recently electric buses seem to have vanished again.

I think that was due to a fire that happened and the reliability was lower than their diesel counterparts (I think it was 90%, compared to 98%). Very sad about that they are gone again.

We see a lot of Teslas here. It was pretty hyped and you had to wait a long time to get one. I don't believe that the unilateral market dominance of Tesla will be kept on the current level to be honest.

In recent days you see more and more smaller city cars.

zhdc18• 7 years ago

It's not going to, but they don't need to maintain their position. Tesla's advantage over everyone else is their ability to mass-manufacture quality battery packs. As long as they can be the first company to integrate advancements in range/reliability (and don't have to worry about manufacturing capacity constraints), they can walk into pretty much any segment they want.

threeseed6• 7 years ago

At least for their China factory Tesla is getting their batteries from CATL who also supply Mercedes, Porsche, Toyota, VW etc.

Tesla isn't going to have much of an advantage in batteries for quite some time until their Maxwell R&D acquisition pays off.

IshKebab• 7 years ago

Most noise actually comes from tires instead of motors nowadays

This is only really true for well-maintained cars. As soon as you have a few lorries, old vans, purposely loud motorbikes, etc. it becomes complete rubbish.

raxxorrax2• 7 years ago

True, and not relevant at low speeds (cities). But I think it is already reality for most cars. Not buses though.

Tesla’s competitors find that going electric has its own set of problems

Related Stories